Michael Cahill (Kerry, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister, the Ministers of State and the team.

On an issue I have raised before with regard to the new oncology unit at University Hospital Kerry, I want to inquire about funding. I acknowledge the work of Comfort for Chemo Kerry. It has already raised €1.5 million. There is a need for a new stand-alone unit. Patients are currently making multiple trips to Cork for treatment in other hospitals. Last year, over 5,000 patients were treated in UHK.

Again, I am inquiring about funding. I have raised the need for additional beds in University Hospital Kerry before. It is really with a view to addressing the chronic situation in the accident and emergency unit. I would just like to find out where that is at. In our community hospitals in Cahersiveen, Dingle and Kenmare, there have been beds and wards closed for as long as I can remember. Every second month, there is a protest outside Dingle hospital, or West Kerry Community Hospital, as many more people would call it. It is down to staffing levels and the problems we are having on our peninsulas with attracting staff. That is what I am told. That needs to be addressed. It is just not good enough to leave all these beds closed because, as I have raised previously, we have had cases of patients from Kenmare in Dingle and patients from Dingle in Kenmare and many other different community hospitals.

Many people are making five-hour round trips before they even see their loved ones in hospital. That needs to be addressed. We need to incentivise staff in order to get them into these areas. It seems to be so difficult to attract staff. I cannot for the life of me understand why because it is a lot cheaper to build a house or buy a house in many of the areas to which I refer and the cost of living there is not as high as it is here in the capital.

There is a chronic problem with respite beds in Kerry. Is there funding available to increase the number of respite beds? We need to do that as a matter of urgency. We have a brand new community nursing unit in Killarney, which is a good news story. When will it be opened? That question has been asked a lot by my constituents in Kerry.

With regard to primary care, there was an issue in the recent past about the location of the primary care centre in Killarney. What are the plans in that regard? How soon will plans to develop the primary care centre in Killarney that is urgently needed be implemented? It was supposed to happen on the Áras Phádraig site. There were issues with that. I felt it was the wrong location. What is the position regarding the primary care centre for Cahersiveen? A planning application was submitted but an objection was lodged. I think that has been resolved.

Will the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, provide an update on the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and where we are at with south Kerry CAMHS? The look-back review has been delayed. We had a lot of issues, which were well documented in the public arena, with regard to children in Kerry, both north and south.

The new maternity unit is another issue I have raised previously. I have received complaints from patients and from families in regard to the distance between the maternity unit and the surgical theatre and the problems that was bringing. Where are we on that matter? On the monthly maternity patient safety statements, earlier this year I received an email from a member of the public about the number of incidents in the maternity unit in comparison with the number of births there. Perhaps I could get a comment on that.